If you’re eagle-eyed reader you may have noticed that I missed posting last week. Life happens. No excuses, just what it is. However, since I seem to have ample motivation this week I thought I might make up for things by posting twice this week.
This month marks 18 years since we first stepped onboard Kate during our week-long boat viewing marathon in California. (The photo for this post is of our shadows on the dock the first time we viewed Kate. It was a spontaneous happy snap that just felt ‘right’)
Not only was Kate the first boat we found online when we started looking at listings, she was the only one we viewed in person twice. Perhaps most importantly she was the only boat that felt like home.
We put our offer in while waiting to board our plane back to work later that afternoon. The seller later reveled that two higher offers were submitted only hours after he accepted our bid. It was meant to be.
So, as a little Flashback Friday treat, I thought I would share a chapter that I’ve been working on about our arrival in Mexico in 2009. This was not a very exciting passage, just a 60 nautical mile day hop across the international border, but it marked a significant milestone for us. After 10 months of prep and delays these were our first miles towards our goal of sailing to Australia. (And no, we haven’t gotten there yet!)
I hope you enjoy the read! As always, love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Love,
H&S
Ensenada, Mexico
February 2009
We pull into marina Baja Naval in Ensenada as dusk approaches, despite having left San Diego at 0300. Mexico is our first official destination on our trip south and west across the vast Pacific Ocean towards Australia. We have only sailed, or rather mostly motored, sixty nautical miles to get here, but it feels significant. After nine months of preparation and delays we are finally underway. February is not the ideal time of year to be heading south, but we couldn’t wait any longer. I hope our windless first day at sea is not foreshadowing the months to come.
As Steve prepares to back Kate into the marina slip, I lower the fenders along the starboard side and stand on the port side, a fender dangling from a line in my hand, just in case. Steve’s been driving boats since he was a kid but manoeuvring Kate in reverse is always a breath holding situation. Our propeller is offset and undersized, and despite our recent upgrade from a two-blade folding prop to a three-blade feathering propeller, the prop walk in astern is not predicable. That coupled with the fact that a 10-ton sailboat does not have much steerage at low speeds, and the only constant is that Kate never reverse in the direction we want to go. Docking, therefore, is a fine balancing act of speed and direction, and in a busy marina we don’t have room for error. The fender I am holding is to try to cushion an impact if something doesn’t go exactly according to plan.
As Steve slowly eases Kate into the slip, I grab the spring line tied amidships and get ready to leap onto the dock. My job is to land safely and stop the backward momentum of the boat by tying the forward running spring line to the dock, essentially pulling the hand brake. Then I run forward, grab the bow line I have left draped neatly on the lifelines, and secure it so that the bow is parallel with the dock before heading aft to grab the stern line from Steve to finish tying us securely to the dock.
We have docked Kate plenty of times before but never in such a busy marina, and I know everyone nearby is watching, they always are. Marinas are like fishbowls, and I hate the feeling of being under glass. We are being judged by the make of our boat, how much gear we have or don’t have on deck, the colour of canvas, the flag we fly, how shiny our paint is, how fast we approach the dock, if I make the leap safely, how we tie and tidy our dock lines. Our mistakes and appearance will be grist for the local gossip mill. In a marina like this, where it is obvious that many of the boats don’t often leave, I know there is a probably a regular gabfest over morning coffees.
Steve and I always talk our manoeuvre through before docking, approach slowly, and never raise our voices at each other. We don’t want any more attention than necessary, and we vowed to never to be one of those couples. The man standing at the helm like a race car driver and the women flapping around on deck, both parties barking at each other. Thankfully, our docking is practically textbook, but I am vibrating from adrenalin by the time I step back on board. Sensing my anxiousness Steve comes over grabs my hand and pulls me gently towards him for a kiss. “Good job Honey,” he whispers. His touch extinguishes my nervous energy. It always does.
After we tidy the deck and take advantage of the hot showers ashore, Steve insists that we go out for something to eat. The long shadows have melted into the encroaching darkness and the cool of the evening wraps around us as we walk along the waterfront. Girls in narrow doorways sing out to us, “Hola amigo! Fish tacos, muy delicioso!” The small restaurants lining the street are no more than a few dirty tables and some mismatched plastic chairs under a bare light bulb. Rustic in a way that I wasn’t expecting so close to the border. The women’ voices, red lips, and kitten heels exude a sexiness that makes me uncomfortable. I am not certain that they are calling out to both of us or to just Steve. I am not even certain that are really selling food. I loop my arm through Steve’s and smile at the ladies, but we don’t sample their wares.
We stop at a popular cantina in town that is jam packed with people, music, and conversation. Everyone is in a celebratory mood, and it does not take long to get infected by the energy of the place. We saddle up to the bar, order two cold beers and let ourselves be wrapped in the sing song Spanish that drifts around us.
Picking through the mix of languages we learned that we had arrived just in time for “Carnival;” the raucous weekend celebration before lent, a last-ditch effort to indulge in all pleasures of life before following the straight and narrow for forty days. For the next three days and nights the town will be engulfed in an orgy of music, food, and alcohol, and we are expected to join the locals for the festivities.
A ranchero band comes through the door, short men in tight jeans, bright boots, and large belt buckles.They are the cowboys of the Baja peddling an instant party with their mobile band. The trio – guitar, clarinet, and tuba – push their way into the middle of the room and start to play a rockabilly ballad with polka rhythm line. It is a strangely familiar tune that I can’t help but hum along to. A spontaneous dance floor erupts and couples of all ages weave around the band, their movements abbreviated by the lack of elbow room. I take another swing of beer, look around the room letting my mind wander back over the past nine months, and all that we have achieved and overcome to get here.
***
Finding the right boat was not hard. We took a week off work and flew to California where a roster of boats we found online were lined up for viewing. With checklist in hand, we meticulously inspected and photographed each vessel, comparing the ones we thought had the most potential in our cheap hotel room each night. Only a few piqued our interest, but when we stepped on board Kate for the first time, we knew we found the one.
She was simply appointed but recently refurbished; one cabin forward, one head, a settee large enough to double as a single bunk on the starboard side and a table with surround seating on the port side, a compact U-shaped galley, and a navigation table opposite each other completed the small main cabin. Built in Wilmington, California in 1973 but designed by the Canadian firm C&C, she had good pedigree.
Considered a “racer cruiser,” the hull was hand laid fibreglass and the four-ton lead keel integral. The seller had been planning a South American cruise, so she had almost all the must-have equipment on our checklist; electronic chart plotter, radar, good refrigeration, sails in good condition. Most importantly, she was the only boat that felt like home. Within the day we put an offer on her and signed the contract, beating out two higher bids by just a few hours.
Of course, we had some work to do to tailor Kate to our style and sailing plans. We upgraded the manual anchor winch to a more powerful electric unit and invested in ninety meters of chain and a larger anchor. We would use the existing smaller anchor and mostly rope rode as our stern anchor. Installing the electric windlass required reinforcing the foredeck and the anchor locker. Steve swapped out the barely used Cape Horn self-steering set up to a Hydrovane windvane, arguing that the meter long rudder of the Hydrovane would get us out of trouble if we damaged the boat’s rudder. He also insisted on building an engine-driven reverse osmosis water maker so we could convert sea water into safe, clean drinking water and not have to rely on finding water sources ashore.
I wanted to replace and redesign the worn-out exterior canvas and sail cover, as well as make cushions for the cockpit, reupholster the sticky, beige vinyl interior cushions, and beef up the wafer-thin mattress on the bunk. We agreed that investing $1000 on a heavy-duty sewing machine so that I could do all the work myself would not only save us money short term, but I would be able to make any repairs to our sails along the way.
We bought a life raft, EPRIB, self-inflating life jackets with tethers, and a satellite phone. Safety equipment we consider necessary for sailing offshore. We also added a storm sail and drogue anchors to our emergency equipment list. We put together a comprehensive medical kit that would allow us to do everything from treat minor wounds to repair broken teeth and medicate for extreme pain and a variety of infections.
After living on board for a few months we decided that the existing 40 litres of refrigeration wasn’t enough, so we installed another 70-litre stand-alone fridge. I slowly kitted out the galley, handpicking storage containers, dishes, pots, pans, and a pressure cooker to maximize every inch of storage space and enable me to cook efficiently. Then I stocked enough provisions to feed two people for 3-4 months.
Steve collected and organized all the spares and tools that we would need to diagnose and fix all the systems on board; mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and rigging. He poured over cruising guides and websites, charts and online forums trying to put together a timeline and sail plan that will move us through several countries, seasons, and weather patterns.
Our goal is to be as self-sufficient and safe as possible. We worked long hours trying to do as much of the work ourselves because we wanted to become acquainted with every aspect of the boat, inside and out. On the weekends we went out sailing on San Diego Bay, learning how Kate handled the conditions, and how we handled sailing together. I took a basic sailing course to refresh what I had learned when I was twelve, because although I had logged 10000 nautical miles of open ocean sea time, none of it was on sailboats.
Living and working together in such tight quarters was nothing new for us, but we were used to the clearly defined structure and safety net of the super yachts we worked on. We planned on sailing across the Pacific Ocean where we would be too far from land to be rescued if anything went wrong. That we would solely be responsible for each other and our vessel regardless of the situation, weighed heavily in the back of our minds.
When the stress of things threatened to crush us, our response was to fight over the small stuff; I didn’t tie a line off on a cleat exactly like Steve liked it to be done, he kept putting the lettuce near the cold plate in the fridge, so it froze. Although these petty arguments acted as a relief value at the time, they also scared me. If our foundations had too many hairline cracks in it, we might collapse when under the real pressure of sailing.
With the project going over budget and our cruising kitty dwindling, Steve took a 6-week contract on a boat in the yard in San Francisco. Days before he was to return home he was struck by a car while biking to work. The force of the impact ripped off his steel-toed boat and catapulted him 20 meters onto the asphalt. He landed in Oakland hospital where they bolted his broken tibia together with 30 cm of titanium and wrote him a prescription for painkillers that made him dream of giant purple spiders and wake up in a pool of sweat three times a night. His recovery took four months, any financial gains he made while working had nearly all been spent paying marina fees and covering our living expenses while he healed. Our carefully planned timeline had been amended but was destined to never be the same, just like Steve’s leg.
***
The band starts playing another tune as the bartender places two more icy beers on the bar, pulling me out of my reflection. Steve lifts his bottle towards me, and a sense of profound relief washes over me. For the first time in a long time, I give myself permission to relax, to stop worrying about what problems lie ahead for us, and to stop theorizing what we could have done to make past events turn out differently.
As I lift my bottle to cheers, I notice that the lingering concern that has shadowed Steve’s eyes for months is gone and there is an easiness in the curve of his lips. I know from the way he winces and his right foot still swells after a long day upright. I know that he’s not one hundred precent yet, but I am happy that he is also able to shrug off the mantle of worry and responsibility for the evening.
“Viva Mexico!” he declares as our bottles clink together.
“We did it! We’re here! I can’t believe we’re finally sailing.” My relief tumbles out into the room.
“This is just the beginning. Wait until we have enough wind to actually sail, then things will really be exciting.”
“I wasn’t seasick today you know,” I say sheepishly. After woofing down a peanut butter sandwich this afternoon, I barely had time to lean out over the cockpit railing before it came back up in a convulsion of abdominal muscles, each new heave making a prefect splash in the flat calm water before floating into our wake in oddly recognizable chunks.
“I thought that was weird, the sea was like glass. I know you get queasy, but we were motoring.”
“Nerves, I think.” I hope, I think to myself as I take another sip and let the cold beer fill me with possibilities. “Waste of peanut butter though.”
“Yes, that’s in short supply now. How many jars did you buy, ten?”
“12. Twelve jars of all-natural peanut butter plus an emergency jar of for the ditch bag.” I declare. “One can never be too careful.”
“Not when it comes to you and peanut butter,” Steve says with a smile, fully understanding my peanut butter proclivity but underestimating my anxiety about sailing. “You’ll be fine,” he says, reaching over to squeeze my hand.
I don’t really understand what sailing across the Pacific Ocean in a 41-foot boat will entail, no one really understands until they are out there. I worry that I am not a strong enough of a woman to take on the challenge, but I have no doubt that our relationship is strong enough to bear whatever we will face. “I will be with you beside me,” I reply with a smile.
We both swivel our chairs towards the crowded room, getting lost in the spectacle once more. For the first night in a long time, I am intoxicated by the adventure we have planned together and despite the big the unknowns, I feel unusually calm.
